Sat – 27 Feb – In Which the Car is Broken Into – South Beach, Fremantle (B@$/@RD$!)

Darren and I went for a wonderful afternoon swim, I think Fiona had gone back to work on this day. Because it was Saturday it was pretty busy around the place, and we wallowed in the clear water with all the other punters.

As we walked back we stopped for a rinse in the shower provided, not far from our car. Darren (who is always 10 steps ahead of me) went first and then as I rinsed off, started to walk quickly to the car.
He had heard a loud crack, and had looked over to see a girl opening our passenger door. She must have seen him coming because she jumped into the back of the car that was parked next to ours on our passenger side, and clambered over to her front passenger seat.
I was blissfully unaware, and started to wander over to the car to see Darren leaning into what looked to me like a very nice vintage car. I immediately assumed he was chatting to the driver about the car, but as I got to our car, the driver had reversed out of his spot, with Darren still leaning on his window, but with his head well away from it, and he suddenly shouted “ Call the police, someone, call the police”
I stood there dumbfounded, as the guy drove away from Darren, past me, with Darren running after him, calling out,
”Take his number plate, he broke into our car…”
Without saying anything else he called to me to get a pen and was repeating the number plate over and over. Still not really understanding what was going on I scrambled for a pen, but Darren had gone around to some people who were sitting by their car, behind ours, who were waving to him with pen and paper already to hand. They had also seen these two, and had apparently seen them try to get into another car near ours. They had sneakily got pen and paper ready, in case they saw these characters do anything truly dodgy, to get the number plate down. Darren was very grateful and explained what had happened out of their site around the side of our car. We got the name of the guy who had witnessed them trying to get into another car.

We went back to the car, and there did not seem to be anything missing from the front. FORTUNATELY, I had locked my purse in the glove box; before we went swimming, as we had our week’s money in there + $70 that Fiona’s flatmate had given us, to buy some beer for her. Thank goodness that didn’t go.
We went round to the back of the car, the back door of which, opened. Fortunately all Darren’s million dollar rods were still all there: send a girl on a man’s mission, and she won’t knick fishing rods! But I realised that my orange rush basket, which I use as a beach bag, had gone. It had my turquoise rashy in it, and after I said that to Darren, he remembered he had seen that on the back seat of their car. The bag I guess they must have managed to cover up.
Darren was slightly shaken, but determined to go at once to the police. He said that he knew that since his assault last year, he couldn’t risk letting his head get hit, or he might have been more aggressive with the bloke who was driving. He had been a rather burly fellow, and I am glad that Darren was cautious about his head.

We went straight to the police station, stopping on the way, to ask directions from a chap sitting outside a café. He gave such excellent directions, that we arrived without a hitch – THANK YOU Man. It’s times like these, that you wish you could find them again to thank them personally for relieving some of our stresses to find the place.

The police were glad to hear from us, quite a number of cars had been broken into there, and we were the first ones able to identify the culprits. The driver had had a tattoo, which D had described, and with the number plate, they knew exactly who it was. The stuff they told us was probably long gone.
I couldn’t remember much of the contents of the bag, except that it had at the top, a bottle of vodka and ginger beer in a gift box, that I had bought for Ian and Megan to thank them for looking after me so well. Imagine what a find that would have been for the thieves. I mean you take your chances when you knick stuff from a car, but a 700ml bottle of vodka has got to be a great day’s work in their book. (B@$*@RD$!)

Anyway, we got the incident number, and went home, via the bottle shop for Shas’ beer. Fortunately she was having a bit of a gathering, and had invited us along, so we had the most delicious food cooked up, and chatted with persons previously unknown, and had a lovely evening, which went some way to healing the wound of the day – thanks Shas.

Unfortunately in the middle of the night, I woke up with the remembrance that my English credit cards with my library cards had been in the bag. So I spent the middle of the night hunting for them, then the morning chasing up the UK for new ones and letting the police know. Other things that had been in the bag slowly had come to mind overnight, so I had to let them know about them too. GRRRR.

Still, considering the amount we usually have in the car and the fact it was fortunately still all at Megan’s, we got off very lightly. Though the bag had been given to me, in happy times, by my friend Niki Pont, who has now moved to Melbourne, so the loss of the bag itself was the greatest.
(B@5*@RD5!)